In my opinion “Iron Chef” is quite possibly the greatest television show ever. I’ll take chefs creating timed culinary masterpieces over the Croc hunter spurting graceful arcs of blood while whilst intoning “what a beaut” every time. For those of you unfamiliar with “Iron Chef” the show pits a widely acclaimed chef against one of the shows regular chefs in an hour long cook off. Both the challenging chef and the ringer (the ringer is called the “Iron Chef”; thus the text) are unaware of the main ingrediant until it is revealed, in dramatic fashion, by the Chairman. What you usually get is the Chairman, looking as though he was born with the sole purpose of being the next Bond villian, standing by a tarped tray of some ingredient soon to be converted into palatable food. He drags the tarp off and, with an amazing amount of gravity, announces the main constituent of the meal, usually squid eyeballs or musk glands or something equally unsavory. The camera then pans to the competing chefs who always look just a little scared. One wonders why they adopt the visage of trepidation as, generally speaking, the ingredient is dead, and even if it’s still alive it’s not very threatening. So then we get to the meat of the show. Both chefs have the same main ingredient foisted upon them and both chefs’ have the same final goal: make food taste good. One chef’s final product is deemed better than the others and then the audience realizes that one artist is better than the other guy, whom I suppose commits ritual suicide or, at least, is forced to manage a Wendy’s. This, naturally enough, makes me think of Apple and the PC world.

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